One of the problems with today's political discourse is the incivility. Nothing positive can happen when you demonize and denigrate those with whom you disagree.

Mr. D.A. King and I have engaged in a back and forth blog discussion on immigration I began some time ago by suggesting Mr. King's inflammatory rhetoric was counterproductive. I noted that proof could be found in the numbers of Hispanics and Latinos, formerly reliable Republican voters, who now support Democrats in overwhelming numbers.

Mr. King, who initially promised to ignore me, has responded by unleashing a series of poorly written personal attacks on me for merely attempting to elevate the debate. He obviously takes comfort and encouragement in the few responses he gets from his cadre of followers.

All his blogs are posted on the MDJ site alongside my blogs. Take a look.

Who's the adult and who's the hysterical reactionary unable to engage in a grown-up discussion? Mr. King is intellectually challenged and lacking the resources to respond civily, he resorts to juvenile nonsense, lamely attempting to embarrass me when it is Mr. King who should hide in shame.

Mr. King, you and your ilk are one of the best things that has ever happened to progressives. In fact, it may well be your own race-baiting that makes the difference for President Obama if he's re-elected.

My stars, Marie! For heaven's sake, I know you and and the rest of his disciples think Mr. D.A. King is just the bee's knees! Land's sakes alive, my next door neighbor and I just laugh ourselves silly and sometimes wince when we read your posts supporting this self-styled illegal immigration "expert"!

Then, my goodness me, we realize you're one of his better informed supporters!

Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Arizona is a dedicated if misunderstood public servant. The controversial 80-year-old lawman who's running for a sixth term just announced his "posse" (as in "head 'em off at the pass!") investigated President Barack Obama's birth certificate determined...drum roll please...it's a forgery.

How exactly Arpaio's jurisdiction extends as far as Hawaii the sheriff doesn't say. But It must have been quite a sight what with the sheriff's posse elbowing their way past Donald Trump's own birther posse in the Honolulu city records department.

Of course the liberal mainstream media mostly disregarded Arpaio's breathless announcement proving to the tin foil hat crowd that, once again, when it comes to important far right wing jihads, the MSM is "protecting" the president.

Arpaio made other, more relevant news last week after his civil class action trial began in Phoenix where the the American Civil Liberties Union and Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund are charging that his officers have based traffic stops on the race of Latinos even when there was no probable cause to stop them. Profiling in other words. The case began after Arpaio's deputies detained a Mexican tourist with a valid passport for nine hours.

This suit is is in addition to the one the Justice Department filed in May charging Arpaio with civil rights violations, which could explain Sheriff Joe's sudden interest in Obama's place of birth.

The problems immigration present require finesse, sensitivity and reason. But when your only tool is a hammer, as in Arpaio's case, everything looks like a nail. Thus, advocacy groups agree Arpaio has ignored Constitutional guarantees in favor of expediency. His notorious tent city jail in Phoenix, which Arpaio proudly calls his "concentration camp," comes to mind.

There's also the unmistakable stench of racism swirling around the sheriff's ham handed tactics. After receiving a letter from a citizen inviting Arpaio to "come over...and round up" men with "dark skin" who have "the look of the Mexican illegals that are here illegally," the area in question was targeted for immigration dragnets. The sheriff himself has said, "go after illegals, not the crime first."

Whether or not either of the law suits endangers Arpaio's re-election remains to be seen, but there is little doubt among advocates that Joe Arpaio is gunning for Latinos and not any blond haired, blue eyed Danes who may be in Maricopa County illegally.

"He's created a whole kind of institutional structure around racial profiling," says Juanita Molina of the Border Action Network director. "It's like the old spaghetti westerns where you've got people in the black hats and the white hats, and there's nothing in between."

The primary difference between conservatives and progressives is that conservatives believe in "me" while progressives believe in "we."

Evidence can be found in the presidential campaign where Mitt Romney insists the individual alone can achieve anything if left alone while President Obama says individuals are only as successful as the people around them, a point the president made the other day in a speech (which of course was distorted by the far right media into "criticism" of small business owners).

Having built and owned a successful business for over a quarter century, I agree with Obama. Nobody in business or any other worthy pursuit ever accomplished anything important without help, guidance and encouragement, including Romney.

Many of the people who worked for Romney at Bain Capital were educated in public schools and universities paid for by the rest of us. Romney's business was defended by the military we paid for. To the extent Romney's companies produced any products, they were moved to markets over roads, bridges and interstate highways the rest of us paid for with our taxes. Without the rest of us, there would have never been a Bain Capital.

The notion that Romney and Romney alone achieved his success is an Ayn Rand fantasy (the mother of "Objectivism," by the way, never started and built a business).

A friend challenged me on this, insisting the Founding Fathers would agree with Romney. I reminded him the Constitution begins with the words, "We the People..."

After signing the Declaration of Independence, Benjamin Franklin famously told his co-signers, "We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately."

That no man is an island is not in dispute by anyone. So let's dispense with the me v. we stuff and get to the heart of the matter which is Obama's statement, "If you've got a business, that, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen."

Presidential historian Michael Beschloss announced shortly after Obama's election that Obama is "probably the smartest guy ever to become president" and "his IQ is off the charts." Therefore, I'm sure Obama didn't misspeak when he made the above statement.

So Mr. Foley, whose capital was at risk when you started your business? It wasn't your own, correct? If, God forbid, your business had failed, who would have suffered the consequences? Somebody else, right?

Who determined your corporate structure, on your behalf?

Who made the hiring decisions for you?

You didn't worry about making payroll, right? Someone else carried that burden for you.

I could go on ad nauseum, but you get my drift.

Obama's statement was an affront to any risk-taking entrepreneur, such as yourself, and it was a bright line in his speech leading to a window into his soul.

Mitt Romney sounded like an antebellum plantation owner when he addressed the NAACP convention the other day:

"...if it were possible to fully communicate what I believe is in the real, enduring best interest of African-American families, you would vote for me for president."

Romney, whose Bain Capital apparently had no African-Americans in its management ranks during his tenure and whose church discriminated against blacks for decades, now knows what's in the best interests of the black community.

"If you want a president who will make things better in the African-American community, you are looking at him," announced Romney with a straight face. "You take a look!"

They did look and it earned the GOP's presumptive presidential nominee hoots of derision. But Romney's loudest boos came when he proclaimed to the crowd he would repeal the Affordable Care Act, evidently unaware that ACA will help some 7 million uninsured African Americans, many of them children.

Of course this announcement wasn't made for the benefit of the NAACP audience. Instead, it was intended for the radical far right fringe who the Massachusetts Moderate thinks will sweep him into the White House. "I am going to give the same message to the NAACP that I give across the country," Romney told his reliable media outlet, Fox News.

Republican Party leader Rush Limbaugh went further: The "express reason" for the NAACP's existence is to "make sure that blacks don't vote Republican."

Actually, the NAACP's "express reason" to exist is the right to vote, which Republican state legislatures around the country including Georgia's are assiduously trying to prevent with draconian voter suppression laws, but that's another blog for another day.

Romney's is a continuation of the strangest presidential election strategy ever seen. Having already alienated women and Hispanic and Latino voters, he now appears intent on a trifecta, sending those few black voters who may be on the fence running to the Obama camp.

Lib in Cobb is right about the block vote of the black community for President Obama. It always struck me as a bit racist on the part of black voters. 95% is a crazy high number. But per the comments written in this article I guess Mitt Romney as a white guy should now ignore black people in this election just because they're black? That's a racist position. It shows a lot more respect to try and win members of the NAACP over to the Republican side with an appeal to reason. Not because of the color of their skin but because they're Americans.

D.A. King who promised to ignore me, seems instead to have become fixated on yours truly. Should I be honored, threatened or just amused? I do appreciate the extra readers!

Let's take it from the top. Some weeks ago, I invited Mr. King to elevate the immigration debate and refrain from using a slur many Hispanic and Latinos find offensive to describe undocumented immigrants. I thought he might be a reasonable fellow, open to constructive criticism politely delivered.

My bad.

Mr. King is a bully with a lot to say, but a man of scant substance. While he blusters on about the evils of undocumented immigrants, the parade is passing him by. America is moving on in search of reasonable and humane solutions to the immigration problem while Mr. King shrieks "stop!".

First, the Georgia State Legislature failed to pass SB 458 in its last session. Then the president announced some 800,000 young undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children may stay here legally. Finally, the Supreme Court struck down most of Arizona's draconian SB 1070 except the "show me your paper provisions" that so enrages Hispanics and Latinos.

Mr. King's approach has backfired big time with the political pay-off undeniably accruing to Democrats. The crucial Hispanic-Latino voting block, once solidly GOP until the anti-immigrant dead enders like Mr. King, Jan Brewer and Joe Arpiao shooed them off, now supports President Obama over Mitt Romney by wide margins.

Mr. King, you have my sympathies, sir. It must be terribly frustrating to see your crusade become irrelevant.

Just how low will a GOP candidate go to hold onto his office? Meet Rep. Joe Walsh (R, Ill.).

Walsh, a deadbeat dad who never served in the military, recently went after his Democratic opponent, Tammy Duckworth…that’s Lt. Col. Tammy Duckworth, a Purple Heart recipient who lost both legs and part of her arm when the Blackhawk helicopter she was piloting was shot down in Iraq. She later served in the Department of Veterans Affairs, helping our wounded warriors.

Walsh, speaking to a crowd of GOP supporters, accused Lt. Col. Duckworth of exploiting her service to win office, a false and disgraceful attack, but something you'd expect from a guy who fails to make his alimony and child support payments for his five kids.

Some of his audience chuckled at his "amusing" comments.

There are just some things you leave alone in politics, things that aren’t funny, and this is one of them. But GOP hacks like Walsh, always quick to hoot about their own patriotism, have no respect for propriety, of doing and saying the right thing.

Just imagine the far right firestorm if Obama had made a similar remark in 2007 about John McCain exploiting his service. But we get utter silence from House Speaker John Boehner and the other so-called leaders of the Grand Old Party when the victim of Walsh's verbal assault on an American war hero is a Democrat, not to mention a woman.

If you are a veteran or a woman or both and you’re thinking of voting Republican, I hope you think again.

Conservatives are always whining about "activist judges legislating from the bench" except when its their conservative judges attempting to legislate from the bench.

Thus, right wingers were rubbing their hands together as they counted on the five conservative Supreme Court justices act on their partisan convictions and strike down the Affordable Care Act. A Washington Times columnist even predicted the Court's ruling on immigration earlier in the week was designed to set up the president for a stinging rebuke.

So it was with great trepidation progressives watched the Supreme Court hustle to rule on Obama's signature achievement, duly enacted by Congress and signed into law by the president. I and many others were 99 percent certain the conservatives on the court would deal the president an embarrassing and costly political defeat just in time for the 2012 election.

Well hush my mouth.

Chief Justice John Roberts refused to be part of a plan to undermine the American democratic process. He voted with the four liberal-leaning justices to uphold most of ACA. Not only that, Roberts made a correction to the original legislation. He rejected the commerce clause argument offered by Obama, but called the penalty of those who failed to comply a "tax" that falls well within Congress' bailiwick.

The timing is splendid. Here we go into July 4 holiday with a rousing affirmation that, indeed, our democracy and the separation of powers created by the founders works.

If indeed it is a tax then it is only a tax on the small portion of people who decide to forego any type of health insurance. To frame it as a tax on the middle class is a bit of a stretch. Most people WANT health insurance. This reminds me of the commercial where 4 out of 5 dentist chew trident gum and the 5th guy only yells out "NO!!!" because a squirrel crawled up his legs chomped his junk. This sounds a lot like faux outrage for a "tax" "penalty" (whatever you want to call it) that very few people are going to wind up having to pay!!

The National Rifle Association is behind the electronic lynching of Attorney General Eric Holder at the hands of Rep. Darrell Issa's House Oversight Committee.

Wayne LaPierre, the paranoid dictator of the NRA (and a good bit of the GOP congress), cooked up a delusional fantasy that goes like this:

President Obama wants to ban assault weapons so he ordered Holder to order the ATF to "walk guns" to Mexico drug cartels under the "Fast & Furious" code name. The ensuing violence, so LaPierre's conspiracy theory goes, would generate a huge public outcry for gun control.

Issa's committee got the message and voted to hold Holder in contempt of congress. And the NRA is telling lawmakers it's "scoring" their contempt votes, just in case they fail to do Wayne-o's bidding.

Now the facts:

1) Obama was inaugurated in 2009.

2) Fast & Furious was a 2006 initiative the ATF undertook with the approval of Michael Mukasey, the Bush administration AG.

3) It went predictably bad. A U.S. Border Patrol officer died in a gun battle in which one of the walked weapons was evidently used to kill him.

4) Holder put a stop to Fast & Furious.

5) Obama has never offered any legislation to control weapons of any kind. Only LePierre seems to know about Obama's sinister plot to lull gun owners to sleep.

If Issa was serious about a real investigation into Fast & Furious he would have called Mukasey to testify. But he's not serious. He's just a pathetic imitation of Joe McCarthy. Right after his committee did what the NRA wanted, Issa was on Fox reciting the LaPierre fairy tale chapter and verse, with El Rushbo and Fox piling on.

Last October, LePierre said "gun owners aren't stupid," something he clearly does not believe. LaPierre thinks he can concoct and charge the president with an outlandish scheme that has no basis in reality and his 4 million members will believe him, such is LePierre's contempt for their intelligence.

During the Bush administration, Phoenix based ATF agents, in conjunction with Mexican authorities, conducted operation Wide Receiver (WR). The goal of WR was to track the movement of weapons across the Mexican border for the purpose of learning who was in the drug cartels, where they were located, and to make arrests.

The weapons had tracking devices and the plan was to use on-the-ground surveillance and aircraft to follow the weapons. It turns out the smugglers discovered the tracking devices and, naturally, disabled them. Once ATF discovered that the smugglers were aware of the tracking efforts, WR was shut down. This was 2007.

Again, ATF attempted to track the weapons and Mexican law enforcement was an active partner. Also, the number of weapons involved ranged from 250 – 400.

Fast and Furious (FF) was another gun-walking program that began in October 2009. In FF, there was no attempt to track the weapons, Mexican authorities were completely in the dark, and over 2,000 weapons were involved.

Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was murdered in December 2010, and 2 FF weapons were found at the scene. Furthermore, FF weapons were discovered at multiple crime scenes where scores of Mexican civilians were murdered.

Once FF was exposed to the public, gratuitous arrests of low-level participants were made to give the program a modicum of credibility.

Time magazine's June 25 cover is sure to grab D.A. King's attention along with the immigration news out of the White House today.

The cover features dozens of Hispanic and Latino young people under the bold title We Are Americans under which is asterisked *Just Not Legally. These folks didn't choose to break our laws and come here illegally.

They were brought to America as children by their parents from Mexico, Central America, Asia and elsewhere. They've lived here a long time. Like the hundreds of millions of other immigrants who came to the U.S., legally or illegally, they've become Americans. Today the Obama administration recognized this reality and the problems presented by deporting such people. It will begin issuing work permits to younger undocumented immigrants provided they've led law abiding lives. Up to 800,000 immigrants could be affected by the decision.

It's a policy that creates a humanitarian solution to a nagging aspect of the the illegal immigration problem. It also bypasses the GOP-led do-nothing House of Representatives, which you can expect to go into full howl along with Mr. King and his crowd.

As with so many other crucial matters - jobs, for example - Speaker John Boehner's House has failed to address the immigration issue. Obama's decision, which will likely be hailed when he addresses the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials at their convention this weekend, is a step toward creating a path toward citizenship.

Obama didn't need to do this. He's already got the overwhelming support of Hispanic and Latino voters. But the new policy does set up his 2012 presidential opponent, Mitt Romney, who's already on the record as a supporter of Arizona SB 1070-type laws and has said he would veto the DREAM act.

I predict here and now Romney will - hold on to your hats - reverse himself on the immigration stand he took during the primary when he speaks to the NALEAO Sunday.

Doubting: No, I would not deport/prosecute the parents. We as a nation should be better than that. This country was built on the backs of the immigrants, mine and yours. My early ancestors came to this country long before any immigration policies. They came here because they were looking for a better life, the very same reasons why today's immigrants come here. The immigration process needs to be changed and streamlined, the people who are commonly referred to as "illegals" are economic refugees looking for a better life for themselves and their children.

There are dozens of baseless charges leveled against President Obama by his legions of haters. With the presidential election fast approaching, I expect we'll be hearing many more.

True or false: Under Obama, government spending has dramatically increased. Listen to enough Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter, O'Reilly, Savage, et al and you would say true, Obama is just a tax and spend big government liberal who's bankrupting the nation, right?

Wrong. According to no less than Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal, from fiscal year 2010 to the present, government spending — including the stimulus bill — has risen at just a 1.4 percent annualized rate under Obama, slower than at any time since the 1950s. Under George W. Bush, by comparison, government spending grew 8.1 percent from 2006 to 2009. Under Ronald Reagan, from 1982 to 1985, it grew by 8.7 percent.

Why do conservatives make stuff up? Can't they just sell us on all the benefits conservatism has to offer without attacking progressives with easily debunked falsehoods?

No, conservatism can't tell you what it really is. Most Americans would never vote for any candidate calling himself a conservative if the truth were more widely known and accepted because conservatism is a political ideology based on deception. There are many examples of how this deception takes place ("Obama wasn't born in America" comes to mind), but look no further than "severely conservative" Mitt Romney for proof.

In 2002, Romney was a moderate Republican governor who publicly supported a wide variety of progressive positions such as a women's right to choose abortion, gun control, gay marriage, stem cell research and global warming. He was a 55-year-old man at the time. Most 55-year-old men I know have pretty fixed views that they've held most of their adult lives.

Yet Romney would have us believe he has undergone a metamorphosis of ideological thinking, perhaps through an amazing series of epiphanies that caused him to reverse virtually all his firmly held convictions of less than a decade ago. It's simply not plausible. Sorry, but Romney is trying to deceive you. He's practicing conservatism and it's as brazenly deceptive as Obama being characterized by the right as a big spender.

The 1.4% growth factor comes from an article by Rex Nutting and considers growth beginning in 2010, notwithstanding the fact that Obama was handed the keys to the White House in 2009.

Here's the rub - who was responsible for the 2009 budget? Whether you assign the 2009 budget to Bush or Obama makes a huge difference.

The 2009 budget should be assigned to Obama because the FY2009 budget was not passed by the Democratic congress until after Obama was sworn in, specifically, Obama signed the FY2009 budget on March 12, 2009. Said differently, Bush never saw the FY2009 budget.

*We welcome your comments on the stories and issues of the day and seek to provide a forum for the community to voice opinions. All comments are subject to moderator approval before being made visible on the website but are not edited. The use of profanity, obscene and vulgar language, hate speech, and racial slurs is strictly prohibited. Advertisements, promotions, and spam will also be rejected. Please read our terms of service for full guides